The Devil You Know - Commentary

Title: The Devil You Know
Year: 2013
Main Characters: Ione MacKenzie, Jack
Current Status: Incomplete

Skipping past 2012's Beaver Flight brings me to 2013's The Devil You Know.  The project was the first one I blogged about here, from concept through progress reports to final results.  The characters may even be familiar.

The Devil You Know began with the concept of crossing urban fantasy with a spy thriller.  Prior to writing, I had read Linda Poitevin's Grigori Legacy, an urban fantasy police procedural that involved angels.  I've also read Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett's Good Omens, a comedy about Armageddon featuring, among others, an angel and a demon working together to prevent the apocalypse.  With those two sources playing in my head, another idea mixed in, one that began with the musing of characters named Jack.  Jack coalesced as a character, and the core idea finally formed.

The first chapter sets up the entire premise, though doesn't spell it out.  A rogue angel out to start the Final War between Heaven and Hell is targeting operations he believes aids the other side, operations like drug running and arms dealing.  Ione got involved through the tracking of BitCoins, leading her to work with the doomed British agents and Gemma.  Jack, who doesn't appear until Chapter 3 and not named until Chapter 5, wants to stop the rogue for his own reasons.  He never told me what those were, though.

The cast grew from just Jack and Ione to a larger ensemble that included Ione's friend Karen, sister Amy, and cat Diesel; British agent Gemma, angelic barista Ben, and Jack's succubus aide Mara.  Each of them received their own minor plotline, from Karen's attempt to have a relationship with Ben to Diesel's secret life.  Everything I learned from previous years got applied, from know who the characters were to giving each character a story of his or her own, even if it was wrapped up when they first appeared.  I also had a direction to head in, the final confrontation between Ione, Jack, and the rogue.  The growth came naturally, though.  Mara, originally added because Jack's jet needed a co-pilot, integrated herself into the plot, becoming a confidante for Ione.  Ben started as a barista but had his role expanded because I needed an angel around.

The story is starting to show its age.  BitCoins have had their day and have failed in being a replacement for currency.  The Russian drug krokodil had its brief moment in the press and has faded to obscurity.  Both BitCoins and krokodil served their purpose in the story, details that tied the narrative to the real world even while devils and angels walked the Earth.

Why incomplete?  Just as with The Soul Blade, I wound up with too many dangling plot lines at a point where I wanted to start pulling everything together.  Gemma, while useful to keep Ione even further off balance, became the odd woman out at a time when I needed to push towards the rogue angel.  I was heading to the confrontation and realized that I hadn't worked out the choreography of the scene.  Beside Ione, Jack, and the rogue angel, there were going to be two high-ranking criminals on a boat in the Mediterranean.  The details weren't working out in my head, and late in November, my brain starts getting fuzzy.  The other issue is length; at almost 52k words, the story is a little short if I want a shot at publication.  Even the last confrontation wouldn't add much more that 2500 words.  That leaves me going back and adding details, either from Ione's view or someone else's.  My first choice for alternate viewpoints is Gemma; it was her people who died in Chapter 1.

For added fun, here's some of the early research I did for The Devil You Know.  I wanted to have an idea for when Ione would return home, so I did a quick search on various airlines' websites to see what the shortest and longest routes from Ottawa to Paris would be.  The results surprised me.

Short notice flight, Paris/de Gaulle to Ottawa:
KLM ($2955), depart 7:20am, 13h, 38min flight, arrive 2:58pm
Route:  Paris – Amsterdam (1h20min)
        55 minute layover
        Amsterdam – Toronto (8h10min)
        2h15min layover
        Toronto – Ottawa (58min)
Thus, Ione gets to work at 4pm, gets chewed out, and gets home at 5:30pm before collapsing.

Air France ($4834), depart 10:30am, 12h28min flight, arrive 4:58pm
Route:  Paris – Montreal [PET] (7h25min)
        2h5min layover
        Montreal – Toronto (1h18min, wait, what? Via WestJet)
        42min layover (yeah, right)
        Toronto – Ottawa (58min)
Thus, Ione gets home at 6:00pm, gets chewed out in morning.
BUT!  Montreal is a two hour drive from Ottawa, while Ione wastes that just waiting for the flight to TO.  She could be in at 2:30 to be yelled at.

British Airways ($2520), depart 10:55am, 13h33min flight, arrive 6:28pm
Route:  Paris – London [Heathrow] (1h15min)
        1h5min layover
        London – Toronto (7h55min)
        2h20min layover
        Toronto – Ottawa (58min)
Thus, Ione gets to home at 7:30pm, gets chewed out at work the next morning.

Checking Paris – Montreal:
Swiss Air ($4587), depart 7:00am, 14h flight, arrive 3:00pm
Route:  Paris – Geneva (1h10min)
        1h55min layover
        Geneva – Zurich (55min)
        1h50min layover
        Zurich – Montreal/PET (8h10min)
Thus, Ione gets home at 5:30pm and chewed out the next day.

Multiple ($2911), depart 7:30am, 16h flight, arrive 5:30pm
Route:  Paris – London/Heathrow (1h10min via British Airways)
        1h50min layover
        London – New York/JFK (7h45min via Virgin Atlantic)
        3h40min layover
        New York – Montreal (1h35min via American Airways)
Thus, Ione gets home at 8pm, gets chewed out next morning

Delta ($4051), depart 7:30am,, 21h30min flight, arrive 11:00pm O.O
Route:  Paris – London/Heathrow (1h20min)
        5h15min layover (what?)
        London – New York/JFK (8h18min)
        5h7min layover (again?)
        New York – Montreal (1h30min via WestJet)
Thus Ione gets home at 1:30am, gets chewed out next morning while still jet lagged.

SN Brussels Airlines ($4505), depart 8:30am, 10h flight, arrive 12:30pm
Route:  Paris – Brussels (55min flight)
        1h25min layover
        Brussels – Montreal (7h40m flight)
Thus, Ione gets to work for 2:30pm to be chewed out, gets home at 4pm.
DING!
Next, VIA Rail
Leaves 1:14pm, arrives Ottawa at 2:51pm, but lets Ione get to office by 3:15pm, home by 4:40pm.

There was no direct flight from Ottawa to Paris.  The best time came from heading to Montreal then taking VIA Rail to Ottawa, skipping layovers that are longer than driving from either Montreal or Toronto to Ottawa.  The last leg of the first flight listed, via KLM, is just faster than driving, but by just an hour.  The longest, via Delta, has two 5+ hour layovers.  Just getting the right flight details made the difference of how awake Ione would be when she talked to her boss.

Tomorrow, the NaNo retrospective wraps up with The Elf's Prisoner.
Also tomorrow, over at Psycho Drive-In, "Casting the Runes" Part I.
Saturday, over at Seventh Sanctum, "Casting the Runes" Part II.
Also Saturday, check out Comics Bulletin for comics-related reposts of Lost in Translation.

NaNo 2013 - Sampler

Chapter 10

Karen was already awake and downstairs when Ione brought her luggage, a sports bag and a computer bag, to the front door.  "You're not leaving without saying goodbye, Ione."  She held her arms wide.

Ione set down her luggage.  She dashed into Karen's arms.  "This time, I'm doing sightseeing.  I'll bring something back for you."  She returned her tiny housemate's hug.

"You better."

"I'll keep in touch.  If I'm not back by Monday, call Olivier and give him some excuse."

NaNo 2013 - The Post Mortem

Another year's NaNoWriMo has come and gone.  I succeeded in reaching the 50 000 word goal, although the story isn't complete.  I count it as a win, but that's me being a bit of a NaNo rebel.

NaNoWriMo 2013 - Week 4 Update

The fourth week of NaNoWriMo is almost over.  Yay!

I crossed the 50k mark on Monday.  This wasn't my earliest day hitting the mark.  That honour goes to 2009's Soul Blade, mainly through the power of being newly unemployed*.  Still, I got through the challenge that is NaNoWriMo and validated, confirming the word count.  Tuesday, I didn't get as much written.  The push wasn't there and I wound up researching a scene that I knew was coming but I didn't have all the information for.  Research led down some really neat rabbit holes, but that same research might have been noticed by the real-life version of Ione's employers.  Drugs and weapons, just for the sake of one scene.

With the push to 50k gone, I'm going to take it easy with the story for now.  I can work out how the novel will end, what happens to everyone involved, and take it easy for a bit.  With the end of NaNo, I can turn my focus to a Lost in Translation book and aim to have that published, either self-published as an e-book or as hardcopy through a publisher.  The Devil You Know gets placed on a back burner for now, though I will be asking friends to beta read it.  I may even pad the book out by adding other people's points of view, such as Karen and Gemma's.  I doubt there will be room for a direct sequel, but a book focused on Jack could be fun to figure out.

NaNoWriMo is getting easier each year I participate, thanks to experience.  I don't feel mentally exhausted like I did at the end of 2006 and Lethal Ladies.  I do try to keep November fresh by trying something different.  This year, it could very well be the difference is getting the story published once it's done and cleaned up.

For those who kept up with me through November, thank you for your patience.

The story so far:
Chapter 18: Completed.  Gemma confronted Ione.  Jack to the rescue.  Jack gets shot.

Chapter 19: Completed.  Finally, the Reveal!  And somehow I worked out that the succubus has a crush on the angel.  Go figure.

Chapter 20: Completed.  Set up the location of the climax.  Mara reveals a new depth.

Chapter 21: Started.  I need to wrap up the Gemma dangling plot thread still.  I have an idea, and everything I need has been set up already.


* The Harper Government's Minister of Finance, Jim Flaherty, doesn't know how to math properly and overspent on security for the Vancouver '010 Winter Olympics.  As a result, all contractors that weren't budgeted were let go, followed by the cancellation of all short-term contracts.

NaNoWriMo 2013 - Week 3 Update

The third week of NaNoWriMo is over.  Yay!

The end is in sight.  As of the end of writing Saturday, I reached just over 46 000 words.  This week, I managed to average over 2000 words per day.  The push to 50 000 words, the goal of NaNo, is almost at an end.  Usually in the third week, I start wanting to switch to a different project.  Last year, Beaver Flight also had the problem of being in the wrong format.  This year, although I am looking at other stories to work on, I'm still interested in The Devil You Know.

Jack's reveal still hasn't happened.  I'm not sure how that will work out, but this is the first draft.  Beta readers, or possibly alpha readers at this point, might be able to point out if the delay works or not.  The story itself has moved from Paris to Monte Carlo.  Why?  Why not?  Quick research let me find ideal places for all the characters, with Google's Image Search showing far more than I expected.  Jack is in his element.

I added a small part that will likely get removed in the next revision.  I needed an interregnum to figure out where Gemma got to and how.  The piece is under 500 words, so it shouldn't make a difference when validation starts on the 25th.  To be safe, I'll make up for the possible deletion before validating.

The story so far:
Chapter 14: Completed.  I wound up backfilling the chapter a bit when I realized that I had Ione reading the wrong book.  The explanation wound up adding more words to the word count.  Includes a massage session and was the last hope for a romance between the leads.  Meet with criminals.

Chapter 15: Completed.  Decision to go to Monte Carlo.  Mara takes Ione shopping.  My French gets a workout.

Chapter 16: Completed.  Explanation of crypto-currency.  I may have to rework the chapter later; Ione's stash of BitCoins may make her richer than I realized.  Fortunately, the crypto-currency has been in the news a lot lately, making research easy.

Chapter 17: Completed.  More exercising of my French skills.  Maybe I am bilingual.  Bechdel test passed.  Some fan service, but only because of Mara, whose own reveal still hasn't occurred.  I'm hoping things makes sense afterward.

Chapter 18: Started.  This should lead to the reveal by Chapter 20, but no guarentees.  The climax is also being set up, but Jack's mastermind quality will get a workout.  Fortunately, he's not a master of the Xanatos Gambit.  He's just good at reading the opposition.

NaNoWriMo 2013 - Week 2 Update

The second full week of NaNoWriMo has come to an end.  Time to check in on how I'm doing.

With workarounds in place to handle my technical issues, I managed to get over 3800 more words written than I had in the first week.  Helping was having November 11, Remembrance Day, off.  Also a help, only having one day below par, 1667 words, with writing each day of the week.

The plot is coming along at a good pace.  Little by little, Jack's scheme is coming together while Ione is dealing with one shock after another.  Research found a nice but expensive five star hotel in Paris that suited Jack's tastes.  A new character became needed when Jack's personal jet needed a co-pilot.  From that need came Mara, who brought along a background and motivation fully formed.  It's great when a character can do that.  Makes me wish the other characters in the story had done the same thing.

Ione is now back in Paris, continuing the investigation she tried to walk away from.  I've been tracking the days and she will have to send an email to work to either call in sick or say that she's working from home.  She has legitimate issues; face time at work would go a long way to rebuild trust with her superiors, even if her immediate supervisor has no problem with the extended rest.  Calling in would create problems; call display would show the long distance number.  Roaming charges on Canadian cell phone plans are outrageous.  Ione will have a lot of questions to answer if she ever returns to her job.

Here's where I am now:
Chapter 9: Completed.  Ione has made her decision.  Karen gets filled in, letting her be the reader avatar.  The planned ending got shunted to another chapter.

Chapter 10: Completed.  I managed to work in a car chase that involved Ione getting on a city bus.  Fortunately, she has (and I have) Area Knowledge: OC Transpo.  Arrival at the Carp Airport, which research shows can support light jets.  Jack makes Ione carry her own luggage.  Mara is introduced as Jack's co-pilot and is wearing very little.  The jet takes off.  Again, some hints about Jack, but nothing concrete.  And I managed to work in a quote from the MST3K version of Danger!! Death Ray.

Chapter 11: Completed.  Another place holder, meaning I need to research video games on Android tablets.  Jack and Mara do something in the cockpit.  Jack sets up Ione for the reveal.  I give my high school French a workout, thanks to Customs/Douane.

Chapter 12: Completed.  Jack keeps working on a few other projects that Ione isn't allowed to see.  Ione also finally corrects Jack about her name.  Arrival at the hotel, where Jack just assumes he has the suite he wants.  Ione has contact with the late Babbage's people.  I will need to research flowers at some point.  Mara becomes useful to have, giving Ione someone to talk to about Jack.  Mara also becomes Ms Fanservice.

Chapter 13: Completed.  Karen disappears after a cryptic message.  Ione plays tourist at Jack's insistance.  Meet with Pascal, one Babbage's people.  Jack makes dramatic entrance.

Chapter 14: Started.  Dinner in the hotel room with Jack.  If there was going to be any romance, this chapter would have been the ideal start.  Alas, not to be.  I don't think Ione trusts Jack enough.  Maybe I'll get Ione/Jack shippers.  Probably will get Ben/Jack shippers instead.

NaNoWriMo 2013 - Week 1 Update

The first full week of NaNoWriMo has come to an end.  Time to check in on how I'm doing.

As I mentioned last time, I ran into multiple problems that were frustrating but, as it turned out, not NaNo ending.  The glasses have been temporarily fixed through the sacrifice of a pair of reading glasses from a pharmacy.  The netbook's problem has been discovered - a malfunctioning touchpad - and was avoided for the past week.  No new problems have come up since then.

I had three days where the writing output was below par.  One day, the words just weren't coming.  After fighting to get not even 500 words down, I took a break and went to get a tea at Tim Horton's.  That was the best idea I had that Monday.  When I returned, I got another 800 words in before calling it for the night.  Wednesday, I knew I wasn't going to get much done.  That evening was last session of the current season of D&D Encounters, and I wanted to be there to run the wrap up for Team Yakuza.  The players had a blast and used clever tactics to defeat Bhaal's Chosen One.  They even wanted to continue the campaign, with two PCs taking over the Thieves' Guild and all four being given patents of nobility.  Nobles get very thankful when their lives are saved from murder gods.  What I didn't expect, though, was to get almost 500 words written afterwards.  I consider those bonus words.  Then there was Friday.  I had the netbook open at work to clean out the fan, thinking the problem was heat.  Well, at the time, I had it down to either overheating or the touchpad.  Cleaning out the dust and gunk on the fan helped; the heat flow is better.  So, I thought about it while waiting for the others during the pre-game food court gathering and wrote sacrificial dialogue.  I was expecting a failure.  I got it.  Three lines of dialogue lost, easily recreated later.  But, nothing written.  I was too tired, thanks to a cold, when I got home Friday night.

With three days of low output, that meant the other four days needed to be busy to even have a hope of keeping close to where I needed to be.  Fortunately, I wrote over 2000 words each of those four days.  I used an older laptop to keep up the pace, one where it had lost functionality in the lower two rows of its keyboards - the space bar and zxcvbm./ - during NaNoWriMo 2007.  I also scored some surplus USB keyboards to use instead, so writing 2000 words?  Not a problem.  This left me about three hundred words short of being on track.  All things considered, not bad.  I've overcome worse deficits.

Here's where I am now:
Chapter 1: Complete.  I introduced Ione, the core mystery, and the main villain (not that he's identified as such yet).  Featured some action and an explosion.

Chapter 2: Complete, but needing work.  Supporting characters introduced, Ione's real work introduced, Karen introduced, Diesel introduced.  Some background info.  During the break I took Monday, I realized that some cats have mystic abilities.  Right now, it's subtle; I'll have to get Jack to make reference to it somehow.

Chapter 3: Complete.  Introduced Ben.  Let Ione finally have her breakdown.  Introduced Amy and the rest of Ione's family.  Another action secquence.  Introduced a complication.  Trying to show that Ione has an adventurous streak without coming out and saying so.  Mysterious stalker makes an appearance.

Chapter 4: Complete.  More setting up of the plot, with a bit of misdirection.  An example of a mystic cat.  Finally getting Ione closer to meeting Jack.

Chapter 5: Complete.  Introduced Jack, finally.  Let's call this the Jack chapter.  First use of a place holder.  I really don't know much about men's high fashion.  A suit is a suit to me.  Probably should separate Amy's part into a new chapter, but the juxtaposition seems right at the moment.  Could also be cut if needed, but that will affect later dialogue.

Chapter 6: Complete.  Gave Ione a chance to be normal before throwing a new shock at her.  Discovered that the University of Waterloo's math department's colour is pink; the pink tie important to the department, too, thanks to a prof and his preference for odd ties.  (Thanks to mathtans for the info!)  More Ben.

Chapter 7: Complete.  More Jack.  In fact, Jack's personality is developing well.  A lot of little details coming out, but without context.  Jack asks for Ione's help, then gives her a choice that should be easy for her to answer.

Chapter 8: Complete.  Girls' night out.  Ben returns.  Ione gets suspicious.  Gangnam Style appears, with appropriate commentary.  Established Ione's lack of church-going.  Need to find a name for the band, but a placeholder (Sex Bob-omb) will do for now.  Small info dump.  The return of of the stalker, and mysterious help.

Chapter 9: Started.  Ione has made her decision.  Karen gets filled in, letting her be the reader avatar.  Planned ending is to have Ione arrive at the airport with the stalker right behind her.

NaNoWriMo 2013 - Cast Pictures

A while back, mathtans suggested creating pictures of characters as references while writing.  This year, I meant to have pictures ready in time, either drawn by myself or commissioned.  Neither happened.  My art skills are rudimentary, with straight lines a challenge.  I did go to the Geek Market, but there were few artists there.

My solution, The Sims 2.

I used the game once before for the Threefold, getting usable portraits for them and some oddly candid shots that fit the personalities.  Why not do it again for Ione and company?

With Ione, I found two hairstyles that could work for her.  Both are short, shorter than originally conceived, but work for my purposes.  The first is closer to the original idea.

Short hair suits her.

The second, though, gave me an idea for later in the story, when Ione needs to change her appearance a little.

Might be difficult to change the part, though.

 With the head done, I started to work out her wardrobe.  Two outfits stood out; one that she would wear to work,

She'll need a jacket.

the other for weekends.

Suitable for coffee shops and curling up with cats.

 I even found her a little black dress for more formal occasions.

Suitable for all occasions.

With Ione done, Karen came next.  Karen's appearance I already had clear in mind,  Shorter than Ione, with long hair tied into a ponytail.  Again, easily done, except for the height.  The game doesn't allow for height variations.  No matter, I can live with it and remember that Karen is shorter.  With Karen, I found the ideal hairstyle quickly, then gave her glasses and earrings.

Karen.

 I didn't get a photo of her nose piercing, but she has a gold stud on the other side.  To emphasize the difference between Ione's workplace and Karen's, I gave the latter a miniskirt and a black blouse.

The boots are a nice touch.

 The idea is that, in Karen's private sector job, what one wears is as important as capability, as opposed to Ione's public service job where clothing doesn't need to be emphasized.  Karen does not have a little black dress, though.  She's more colourful when out on the town.

Showing personality differences through clothing choice.

Since I had the game running, I went through character creation for Gemma.

Gemma.

 A British agent who has already appeared in the story writing, Gemma is a field agent.  It was appropriate to give her a pair of sunglasses.

The future's so bright...

 Her choice of clothes reflects her career.

The name's...

 And, for fun, since the outfit exists, a what-if, as in what if Gemma was in the Village.

The new Number 2.

To complete the character generation in the game, I filled out the personality bars to reflect the characters' personalities.  Karen is very outgoing while Gemma became very serious.  Once done, I tried to get a shot of the three women looking at the camera.  The didn't.  Instead, I got a few candid shots that, like the three fold, just worked.

I can't believe I have to work with two amateurs.

Amateurs?  Have you read the script yet?

That's what was in the envelope?

Fortunately, the game created a proper group shot with everyone looking at the camera.

Say cheese!

NaNoWriMo 2013 - The First Two Days

NaNoWriMo has started, and so have I.  It has been a frustrating two days.  Not because of the story, oh, no.  The story is progressing well.  No, the problem has been technical.  Two events combined to throw my pace off on Saturday.

First, my glasses broke.  Glasses do that, break.  It started Thrusday morning with one arm gone so far past the plastic stage in strain that it resembled a wet noodle that not so much snapped as fell apart.  I came up with a solution that would let me keep wearing the glasses while waiting for my next payday to pay for both a doctor's appointment* and a new pair.  However, thanks to winds that gusted up to 70km/h on Friday, the other arm basically did the same thing.  Without at least one arm to hold the glasses at the right height and angle, I started to get headaches.  My plans for Saturday changed drastically.  Originally, I was going to grab breakfast then go get groceries in the morning, eat lunch at home, then go to the library to write 2500-3000 words.  Instead, I walked up to the nearest mall, bought a pair of reading glasses that were meant for farsighted vision, then took the new pair and my broken pair to the optical store to transfer the arms.  The fit isn't perfect, but it'll do for the two to three weeks it'll take to get my new pair.

The second event was a return of an old problem on my netbook.  For whatever reason, instead of giving me an out-of-memory error, Windows 7 Starter** just hangs.  If you have music playing, you get to hear that last half-second of music until either the system sorts itself out or you give up and power cycle the machine.  I chose the power cycling option after five minutes of waiting for the netbook to sort itself out.  Not my first choice, either; there is a lot that gets loaded these days that really doesn't need to be.  Every application seems to want to be part of the start up.  It's getting to the point where I miss how fast Windows 3.11 started.  That aside, the netbook finished its startup, I killed a few programs that weren't needed, started the suspect program, Google Chrome, to shut down a few tabs, then, while waiting for pages to load in it, reopened my word processor, Libre Office 3.4 and recover what I could.  I lost a couple of paragraphs, maybe a hundred words at most.  Fine, I can retype, the dialogue was still fresh at the time.

Five minutes later, the same damn thing happens again after I type in the previously lost paragraphs.

Not fun.  I left Chrome closed after the second power cycle.  I was annoyed and frustrated enough that, once I typed the same paragraphs for a third time, I had lost the flow of the section.  I managed another couple hundred words before giving up for the afternoon.

The first two days weren't all frustration.  Because of the same wind gusts that finished off my glasses, the game night*** got cancelled due to a power outage.  The original plan for Friday night was to write a few hundred words while waiting for the rest of the players before going to the GM's home to play.  Thanks to the wind, not only did the mall suffer a partial outage, but the entire area surrounding did as well.  No game.  Instead of gaming, I wrote, getting a little more than a full day's worth of writing****.  These extra words meant that on Saturday, despite the setbacks and not reaching the 3000 words I wanted at the library to get ahead, I was still on schedule and even slightly ahead of where I wanted to be.  I also managed to get more than a full day's writing done in the evening, once I had a chance to re-focus on the story.

Thanks to the break I took, I realized that I had given Diesel, Ione's cat, an extra role.  Cats are apparently mystic in nature in my story.  It was never planned.  Diesel was just a small detail, a way to add a bit of depth to both Karen and Ione.  He was never meant to be a potential plot device.  This is what writing by the seat of your pants[link to scaffolding] allows; unexpected little details that come up can be integrated into the story without causing a cascade of rewrites to an outline.

Two days in, over 3600 words written.  I'm on a good pace, and the story is unfolding further than I realized.  I have a good feeling about this.

* In Ontario, eye doctor appointments cost $70.  The rest is covered by OHIP.
** Win7 Starter came with the netbook.
*** For the record, Legend of the Five Rings.  For those who have played the game, my character is a Tamori shugenja of the Dragon Clan.
**** A full day's worth of writing is 1667 words, or one-thirtieth (1/30) of 50k words.

NaNo Prep 2013 - The Villain

I have my heroine.  However, the plot can't really start until she has someone to thwart, since Ione is not the one prompting the plot.  Sure, she'll start taking over at some point, but someone else needs to set the story off.

Enter the villain.*

I realize that there are proper terms used by English majors and teachers for the roles: protagonist and antagonist.  I also realize that the protagonist is the one trying to change the status quo while the antagonist is trying to maintain it**.  At the same time, common usage flips the two, so that the protagonist is the hero and the antagonist is the villain, even if the latter is trying to shake things up and the former is trying to prevent it***.  Thus, my usage of hero and villain; the roles are much clearer.  Just don't ask about Jack.

Since my plot is, boiled right down to basics, "rogue angel tries to start the apocalypse while rogue analyst tries to prevent it", it's time to work out the rogue angel.  Angels tend to be on the side of the heroes, so why is my angel rogue?  What gave him**** that push to start the Final War?  How does a writer peer into the mind of a being so elevated and alien to properly figure out a motive?

Arrogance is a starting point.  The angel, for whatever reason, feels that the time is nigh to begin Armageddon and defeat the demonic forces of Lucifer.  No other angel or not enough angels agree, so the next step is to provoke the War.  The rogue wants to anger demons working on Earth into retaliation.  Get the demon angry enough and it may very well lash out, upon which the rogue angel can call foul and say that Armageddon has begun.  This course of action gives me at least two motives for Jack.  The first is that he is the demon being provoked and that he sees through the ruse.  The second is that he doesn't want to see the Final War started yet; he likes his job and has gone slightly native.

Now, I have a motive for the rogue, at least a superficial one where the cause can be looked at deeper in a follow up story.  There is probably a deeper reason, but there may not be time or even a proper point of view to dig into it.  What happens next?  How does the angel provoke?  The main way I can think of is to disrupt a demon's work, preventing the demon from corrupting others.  Easiest way to corrupt others is temptation, and mass temptation comes through a network where once you're in, it's difficult to leave.  A cult won't cut it; sure, it will get a number of people to follow, but outsiders will scoff at the victims' sanity.  Organized crime, though, has a number of tentacles, aided and abetted by governments through Wars Against; War Against Drugs, War Against Alcohol, War Against Terrorism.  From there, organized crime has its tentacles into everything from municipal construction to protection rackets to loansharking to legitimate businesses laundering money.  The rogue angel just needs to ferret out the chain to hit a criminal organization where it hurts.

The next question is where.  The edges of the criminal empire are the street dealers, the human traffickers, the enforcers, but they have to answer to someone above them.  The gang leaders, the barons of crime, are usually isolated from the illegal activity, funding and reaping the benefits through layer after layer of deniable plausibility, at least in fiction.  Power tends to corrupt, so the demons don't have to necessarily be attached to the heads of the crime gangs; they can be a few rungs lower, whispering into lieutenants' ears and providing other funding while skimming off the top.  So, the rogue just needs to work up from the bottom, which will have already been done by the start of the novel.  The story is Ione's, not the angel's.  This leads to a warehouse in Paris.

Going off track a bit, here's where Ione comes in.  Her job, CSIS analyst and decryption expert, means that she uses various methods of intelligence, mainly signals intelligence (SIGINT), to locate threats.  Ione used the tracking of BitCoins to find an arms dealer, made contact over the Internet, and needed to set up the meet with British agents hunting the marketer at the warehouse is Paris.  It's not the same method of tracking that the rogue angel uses, but still effective.

Why Paris?  While working out the details of the spy who carries the story, I thought about the different nationalities possible.  I originally thought to use a British spy as my lead, riffing off 007.  I also considered a CIA agent and dismissed the idea of a Canadian in the same position.  But while I worked it out, I realized an agent out of her depth would work far better than an experienced spy, and the best way to do that would be to use a Canadian.  During all that, though, the opening scene coalesced, leading to the warehouse in Paris.  I thought about moving it.  With a CIA agent, I could move the plot to Montreal, since the CIA isn't officially allowed to work within the US.  A CSIS analyst, though, could just pass along the info to a field agent who could drive to Montreal, leaving Ione out of the plot altogether.  If I moved the plot to the US, the angel starts running into religious issues in the States, a factor that I do not want to touch.  So, Europe it is, and Paris works as a hub of intrigue.

Now, I have a main villain.  There's a small problem.  There's no pressure on Ione to find the rogue angel in a short amount of time.  Sure, Jack will urge her along, but Ione doesn't have a motive to speed things along.  Enter my secondary villain, a British agent who believes that Ione set up the British team at the warehouse.  This agent, who does need a bit of fleshing out but will work on standby for now, wants to know what happened and doesn't believe the official reports.  She thinks that Ione isn't telling everything she knows.  The agent is right, but for the wrong reasons.  So, with the British spy nipping at her heels, Ione has a reason to work with Jack.

That should be enough for me to get going November 1st.  Little details will still need to be worked out.  Some research, such as types of rental cars available both here in Ottawa and in Paris, needs to be dug into.  I should be good to go for November.


* Dun dun DUN!
** Die Hard with the director's commentary on should be required viewing and listening for anyone wanting to film and even write.  I learned far more in those two hours than in four years of high school English.
*** Exceptions abound.  The heist movie genre alone provides the bulk of exceptions.
**** Or her.  There's no decent third person neuter pronoun that doesn't imply non-sentient object.  "It" is a very impersonal word.

NaNo Prep 2013 - Sarah Ione Mackenzie

With just 12 (edit, thanks, mathtans:) 4 days to go, time to figure out my lead character enough so that if I head off in an odd direction, I will know exactly how she would react.  The plot is, ultimately, driven by the characters, hero and villain alike*.  The more I know the characters, the more I'll be able to write myself out of corners.

I'll borrow the format from Subject 13 for the basic info.  Tables are good at displaying information.

Name: Sarah Ione Mackenzie
Birthdate:         December 1982
Birthplace: Ottawa, ON
Sex:         Female
Description:
         Eyes: Green
         Hair: Brunette
         Distinguishing Marks:
        None
Family:
Mother: Lise Mackenzie, nee Flynn, born in 1955
Father: John Mackenzie, born in 1952
Sister: Amy Marie MacKenzie, born in 1989
Education:         B. Math
        M. Sc in Math
Employer:        Government of Canada

Ione prefers using her middle name; she was one of far too many Sarahs in her classes and decided to go to her middle in high school to avoid being Sarah-with-an-h M yet again.  She grew up in Ottawa, with frequent trips to visit her grandparents in Montreal.  Ione can speak French; it's just with an accent that will have her stand out in France.

The employer is vague.  If asked about her job, Ione herself answers, "I'm an analyst in the Public Service."  It's truthful, but vague.  Ione is an analyst with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, decrypting messages and analysing patterns.  A career that should normally be boring, along the lines of Ian Fleming's early description of James Bond; "A man with a government job."

Ione's home life is simple.  She rents a house near Little Italy with Karen Higgs, a friend from their Waterloo days, and Diesel, a cat.  The cat just moved in after Ione and Karen did, as cats are wont to do.  The house, based on one found on a search is a two-floor, two-bedroom building with narrow kitchen.  Ione's bedroom has her bed, dresser, an office chair, a desk where she docks her laptop (Windows), tablet (Android), work cell phone (Blackberry), and personal cell phone (Android).  Her bedding is typically green, with a quilt made by her grandmother.  Ione also maintains a Linux box in the living room to act as a server for the various other electronics around, including a Playstation 3 and Karen's Mac laptop, iPhone, and iPad.  The Linux box also lets Ione do extracurricular work, including the work that leads to Chapter 1.

Getting to work, Ione uses the bus.  It's actually easier to get to downtown Ottawa by bus than to try to find parking; it's cheaper, too.  And as "Camelot" is still being built, Ione gets to work in an unnamed building in the downtown core, which, for the purpose of the story, will be on Sparks Street.  Ione doesn't even get a cubicle with a window view; her work requires her to be moved away from the views.

Karen, meanwhile, doesn't work for the government.  She is an ambitious up-an-comer in the private sector, working in the financial field.  Karen will use the bus, but also drives if she's planning on working late.  She owns a car, a Fiat 500, that she'll let Ione drive as needed.  Ione chips in for fuel and car payments.  If Ione needs to drive somewhere when Karen already has the car, well, that's what the Kawasaki Vulcan is for.

Ride long and prosper.

Ione has an adventurous streak, one that she manages to keep restrained for the most part but lets loose in odd ways, like taking a job at CSIS instead of continuing on to her doctorate and riding a motorcycle on weekends when the weather is good.  Ione also participates in a boffer LARP, where she wields a fake sword with gusto.  Chapter 1 will show her a consequence of the streak.**

I think I have a good idea of who Ione Mackenzie is and how she'll react when I start throwing plot and Jack at her.  Next step, work out what the villain is doing.

Oh, and feel free to comment and give feedback here.  Better a problem gets fixed now than during November.

* And whatever Jack is.
** Does it sound like I have Chapter 1 ready?  Because I totally do.  I just can't write it until 00:01 November 1st.

NaNo Prep 2013 - Casting and Other Minutiae

I've decided on the urban fantasy spy thriller.  I have less than a month before NaNoWriMo starts.  Time to get details down.

NaNo Prep 2013 - Decision Time

Last year, I didn't make a decision on what to write until October 31.  That may have contributed to the low word count (barely over 50k words) and losing interest halfway through the month.  This year, though, I think I have a good candidate.

A quick reminder of the candidates:
- the steampunk superhero
- the Threefold
- the Traveller story
- the urban fantasy spy thriller

The Traveller story will have some work to be done, figuring out the speed of news.  I also want to get at the idea sooner, turning the concept into a more serial approach.  I'm liking the idea of a serial right now, plus having the story on the web instead of in a book would allow for hotlinks for some setting and game concepts.

At the same time I placed the Traveller aside, Jack from the urban fantasy spy thriller started feeding me scenes.  At this point, I have the base plot, most of my main characters, a start on the spy, a few locations in mind, and extra complications besides the end of the world.  With five weeks to go, that should give me enough time to work out details and key events.

The Clockwork Avenger and the Threefold will be set aside for now, though I'll keep playing with both ideas for future use.  They both have potential, but neither really had a character come up and say, "You will write me."

NaNo Prep 2013 - The Urban Fantasy Spy Thriller

Now that the Traveller cast is finally out of the way, time to move on.  NaNoWriMo is only two months away and I need to work out a couple more ideas to see which one has the promise to get me through November and leave me with a story that I think will carry me through the month with something to polish and, maybe, hopefully, submit.for publication somewhere.

This time around, the idea is an urban fantasy.  Inspired by the Grigori Legacy series by Linda Poitevin, the story revolves around two characters.  One is a spy working for, as of right now, the British Secret Service, formerly known as MI-6.  The other is a demon.  Let the wacky hijinks ensue!

Well, maybe not.  If I'm going to cross urban fantasy with spy thrillers, then turning the work into a comedy isn't going to be a good idea.  There may be humour, but that humour will flow naturally from the characters and situation.  The story should be remind people of the more serious 007 stories and of Bourne.  Fortunately, I've read and watched serious spy thrillers, so I can work in the atmosphere.  Another issue, though, is that the Cold War is over.  Espionage has changed greatly since the Eighties.  The traditional boogeymen, the Soviet Union and China, aren't the threats they used to be.  The focus is now on terrorism and organized crime, not foreign agents trying to steal state secrets.

This is where my spy comes in.  She works for an agency, charged with gathering information.  Anyone who has watched Burn Notice will happily point out that most of the info gathering is done by cut-outs*, not by actual agents.  Even the people processing the signal and Internet intelligence are more likely to be contractors* instead of agents in the employ of the agency**.  Corporations are more likely to have employees doing "market research" than governments are right now.***  Despite all that, I need my agent working for the agency; freelancers don't have to deal with the paperwork or the supervisor asking difficult questions.

The agent is professional.  She worked her way up from entry level to a position of responsibility.  She started in signal intelligence (SIGINT) and expanded to using the Internet to intercept data.  Over her career, she gained responsibilities and managed to get assigned to missions and investigations that required getting out of her office.  She even has her own stable of cut-outs that she uses to build data models.  As far as she's concerned, the supernatural is a fiction to scare off the superstitious.

Over on the supernatural side, the demon.  Some time ago, I mentioned that he said I could call him "Jack".  Obviously, that's not his real name.  Names have power.  Nicknames don't.  Jack is a big believer in letting others do his work for him.  All he needs to do is nudge at the right moment.  Jack is going to be an enigma in the story, but I do need to work out his motive.  He has one, and it's a biggie; Jack has sympathy for the creatures on Earth.  Someone has to take their side, and he has yet to meet anyone on his or his opposition's that does.  Besides, humans are so amusing, and if they're destroyed, how is he going to keep watching Supernatural?  The only thing I know for sure about Jack is that he lies.  He lies convincingly.  There's no power behind it; he uses sheer charm.  What would be the more dangerous demon, the four-metre tall red-skinned horror with a flaming glaive spitting acid, or the one that looks like an average person telling you that if you just trust him, everything will work out?

The two lead characters, Jack and the spy, will have conflicts.  Jack doesn't care about the agent or her people; he has a bigger problem and, at best, they're useful only if they help him in his mission.  The spy feels the same way, but Jack is underfoot, in the way, and completely unreadable.  The question remains - do I hook them up, or do I just tease the reader?

Meanwhile, the antagonist is busy.  The villain of the story is the catalyst.  All three will appear in the opening act of the story, but it is the villain who forces Jack and the spy to get involved.  The leads have to work together to try to stop the dastard.  The villain?

An angel.

Let's go back a bit, to the Nativity.  The Archangel Gabriel appeared before Mary and said, "Fear not."  Odd thing for someone to say to people he's appearing before.  Except that angels are scary beings.  If one gets it into his head that humanity is a danger and goes rogue, what can stop him?

Hopefully, a spy and a demon.

I now have my key characters, and supporting characters can be determined as needed.  The setting is now.  But, well, where?  I could use Ottawa, but the city really doesn't have the levels of organized crime I need for the first chapter, and the presence of embassies from around the globe would add an extra element of complexity that isn't needed.  (An Angel storming through the American embassy would involve a response that makes overkill look lenient.)  If I move the setting over to Europe, there's an added flair of exotic destinations being menaced.  The agent's home country will determine her name; even limiting her to an English speaking country like the UK, the US, or Canada, the feel of her name would change to reflect her nationality.  If she's from the UK, Gemma; from the US and she becomes Stephanie; and as a Canuck, she becomes Sarah.  Nationality would then factor into personality to a degree.

So, I have my characters, a rough setting, a good idea of the first chapter, a rough idea of the plot, a mix of investigation and action, and this may be ready to go for November.


* For those familiar with Burn Notice, what Michael did for the CIA before being burned.  Long answer, people who are willing to provide information and do legwork but don't work for the agency.  They may not necessarily know who they are working for, depending on how the handler chooses to work with the cut-outs.
** I hearty wave to those of you doing your jobs right now reading this blog post.  I'm sure my browsing history makes for an odd read.
*** And the ads Google will give me just from the research for this post will be interesting.